in our spotlight on business report tonight it is the unofficial start to the summer season and one of the busiest travel weekends of the year aaa northeast projects the bulk of new jerseyians nearly a million are expected to go by car though some are braving the airports just days after the faa scaled back the number of flights that can come in and out of newark airport while the hub continues dealing with staffing shortages and communication outages ted goldberg caught up with some travelers heading out of newark's terminal b this morning who were already up against delays it's cheaper more cost effective to fly out of here that's why we chose new work now we are paying for it memorial day weekend is off to a bumpy start at newark airport there was already a closed runway and a shortage of air traffic controllers throw in cloudy weather and you've got a recipe for more than 100 delays friday morning so far we've been told 30 minutes but the plane has not yet taken off from cincinnati the plane that'll that supposed to take us back to cincinnati we went to check in they said it's going to be a little delayed and uh we were told to sit down until they call our names to come check our bags so we've been here about an hour to check our bags so far knowing um the delays that have been happening at newark it was expected so when you travel on a holiday it's something to be expected so you just have to deal with it the flights are a little bit delayed i know they're just delaying on baggage check too right now cuz it's usually like 2 hours before and she's only doing an hour before it's a little weird newark airport has made headlines after its air traffic controllers briefly lost contact with planes multiple times over the last few weeks i asked travelers if they had concerns about flying in or out of here absolutely i fingers crossed hopefully everything goes okay it's out of my hands now i was a little concerned but alleion's been great they haven't had any delays that was the first concern when planes fly off and the radars uh shut down and they can't even get the plane to land because they don't know where the planes are i feel comfortable cuz the airport's not that crazy especially for a holiday weekend and um so far everything's going great it was kind of scary but we thought well they probably got it under control and that i think the faa has come in to try to control a little bit more of the flights after an faa order earlier this week newark is reducing its flights by more than a quarter for the next 3 weeks normally there are 77 combined departures and landings per hour now it's 56 sarah mckeon is the director of the aviation department at the port authority of new york and new jersey and she spoke at a port authority meeting thursday that we should stop seeing the last minute cancellations uh due to faa staffing challenges um and that should allow people to best plan uh for what they need to do i will just note that uh in terms of flying in and out of newark uh the operation remains very safe robert sinclair jr works for aaa northeast and says the faa reducing an airport's capacity doesn't happen every day aaa is one of the largest leisure travel agencies in the country so if this were a common practice we would have heard about it he added that our rainy weather has led to delays all over the country roughly 75% of all nationwide air traffic control delays due to weather start in new york because of the hub and spoke system the fact that we have five airports here so if new york sneezes the rest of the country catches a cold as a result of all this some at newark airport have sworn off flying from the garden state would you fly to laguardia next time yeah or jfk i don't really like coming over to new jersey that much newark airport given the last uh 3 4 years has to be probably the worst airport in the world i think the only one that comes close to it is laguardia while sinclair says aaa still expects a record number of travelers for memorial day weekend the vast majority of them by car we have not seen a rash of cancellations uh as a result of these problems you know the the flying public is not fleeing air travel as a result of this newark will have more flights arriving and taking off as soon as june 15th when a runway is scheduled to reopen after a renovation the other issues affecting this airport will need more time to fix at newark airport i'm ted goldberg nj spotlight news support for the business report is provided by riverview jazz presenting the 12th annual jersey city jazz festival may 27th to the 31st event details including performance schedules and location are online at jerseyscityjazzfestestival.com